Mr. Hardinge continued for some time to expatiate on the loveliness of Grace's character, and to betray the weight of the blow he had received, in gaining this sudden knowledge of her danger. He seemed to pass all at once from a state of inconsiderate security to one of total hopelessness, and found the shock so much harder to endure. At length he sent for Lucy, with whom he continued closeted for near an hour. I ascertained, afterwards, that he questioned the dear girl closely on the subject of my sister's malady; even desiring to know if her affections were any way connected with this extraordinary sinking of the vital powers; but not in the slightest degree inclining to the distrust of Rupert's being in any manner implicated in the affair. Lucy, truthful and frank as she was, felt the uselessness, nay, the danger, of enlightening her father, and managed to evade all his more delicate inquiries, without involving herself in falsehoods. She well knew, if he were apprised of the real state of the case, that Rupert would have been sent for; and every reparation it was in his power to make would have been insisted on, as an act of justice; a hopeless and distressing attempt to restore the confidence of unbounded love, and the esteem which, once lost, is gone forever. Perhaps the keenest of all Grace's sufferings proceeded from the consciousness of the total want of merit in the man she had so effectually enshrined in her heart, that he could only be ejected by breaking in pieces and utterly destroying the tenement that had so long contained him. With ordinary notions, this change of opinion might have sufficed for the purposes of an effectual cure; but my poor sister was differently constituted. She had ever been different from most of her sex, in intensity of feeling; and had come near dying, while still a child, on the occasion of the direful catastrophe of my father's loss; and the decease of even our mother, though long expected, had come near to extinguish the flame of life in the daughter. As I have already said more than once, a being so sensitive and so pure, ever seemed better fitted for the regions of bliss, than for the collisions and sorrows of the world. Now we were at Clawbonny again, I scarce knew how to employ myself. Grace I could not see; Lucy, who took the entire management of the invalid, requiring for her rest and quiet. In this she did but follow the directions of reason, as well as those left by Post; and I was fain to yield, knowing that my sister could not possibly have a more judicious or a more tender nurse.